Databases – The Blackacre Times

The GSU College of Law Library recently added PowerNotes (Premium) to its Database List. This is perhaps somewhat misleading as PowerNotes is not a research database, per se, but rather a research outlining and management tool. There is a stripped-down free version of PowerNotes; however, the law library acquired institutional access to its premium service (including unlimited projects and other upgrades) for the GSU College of Law community.

PowerNotes uses a browser extension to help with online research, specifically gathering and keeping track of source materials, and organizing and creating a writing outline. Users can install either the Chrome or Firefox browser extension; these are the only browser options at the moment. Once installed, use your campus email address to create an account. Now, you can create a project and begin searching on a preferred research platform or across the web, generally. PowerNotes works with any webpage you browse, including legal subscription services such as Westlaw Edge, Lexis+, and HeinOnline (which provides a LibGuide on how to use PowerNotes on its platform). This is perhaps its most significant feature– centralizing your research regardless of where the source material resides online.

When users find relevant information, they can highlight the text, save it, assign a topic to it and annotate it. The text is saved with a link back to the source. Citation information is automatically collected and put in a preferred citation format, say bluebook. At any time during the research process, users can revisit their projects and reorganize, rename, or expand their topics and quotes.

PowerNotes has compiled a helpful instructional video library. Also, the law library will host training on PowerNotes on Tuesday, March 1 @ 3:15 PM and Wednesday, March 2 @ 5:10 PM. Both sessions will be 45 minutes and satisfy a topic session for the Law Library’s Applied Legal Experience, Research, & Technology (ALERT) Program.

In the interim, if you have questions or problems accessing PowerNotes, contact Librarian Manion. Do good research.

On Wednesday, May 26, 2021 (just in time for the start of the summer semester), the Law Library launched its new database list tool aptly titled “Law Library Databases A-Z.”

For the most part, students might not even notice or experience much of a change. The new service should look remarkably familiar for a couple of reasons. Namely, it shares the same platform with the Law Library’s existing Research Guides. Further, the University Library also uses the same tool to host its database list.

As such, we do not expect students to have too many issues accessing the databases they rely on for research. That said, the new platform presents a number of new features and potential integrations with other systems.

The new database list offers a powerful interface to browse, sort, search and share the law library’s licensed databases. Users can still browse databases alphabetically, by subject, access type, and vendor, as well as search the entire collection. We retired the obscure and confusing access codes (GSU, GSR, LL, COL, etc.) for more descriptive access types such as College of Law only, All GSU, and Law Library workstations. Did you really ever know the difference between a GSU and GSR database?

New features include “Popular Law Student Databases” and “New and Trial Databases” lists located on the website’s right rail. These features offer easy access to commonly used law school resources and new library acquisitions, respectively. The new database list also allows for the simple sharing of resources –by this, we mean sharing with yourself for later use or sharing with your fellow students. After each database, there is a share icon that will allow users to email the database name, description, and link to themselves or another user. The “Top Resource” feature allows librarians to tag a database as a preferred or suggested resource and spotlight it in the browsable subject list display. Finally and arguably most important, now that the Law Library’s database list shares a platform with Research Guides, databases can be better leveraged and integrated into the research guides.

This is all good news, but it is somewhat bittersweet sunsetting our old Database List. This was a clever in-house application built by a handful of intelligent people (other than myself). The administrative side of the database list also managed Law Library’s proxy server. Pretty cool, right? While I cannot identify the actual launch date, the Wayback Machine suggests the database list served the College of Law Library and its patrons for at least fifteen years. That is a long life for a web application. So it is with a heavy heart that I say goodbye to the old and hello to the new.

The new database list can be found at https://libguides.law.gsu.edu/az.php. All links on the Law Library webpage will direct researchers to the new service. The look of our research guides and Law Library Databases A-Z may change in the coming months as the Law Library moves to a new website presence more in line with the College of Law’s website. That said, the functionality will remain the same.

Do good research.